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3 Fundamental Ways to Deliver Great Customer Service

I was sitting in a mall with my friend Natasha when she
made a very funny request. She asked me to call her employer and ask her for
the job offer that my friend had recently taken up. Unusual as this was, I
called her employer and said “Hello ma’am, I saw your ad on the internet and was
wondering if you are looking for an interior designer for your home? Oh, you've already got someone to do it? How do you like the designs? Okay, no problem, yes, I know that ad is quite old, but I just
thought I’d try my luck. I'm glad you’re satisfied with your current interior
designer. Have a nice day.” I kept the phone and saw that Natasha was grinning
ear-to-ear. On probing, I realized what I initially thought to be a distasteful
prank call was in fact a tactful technique my friend had used to gauge exactly
what her employer thought of her. She said, that if her employer had any
complaints, she would have definitely voiced them to me, as I was a third
person. The fact that she didn't was proof that she was really happy and
satisfied with my friend’s work.

Sensitize

In day to day business, we tend to ignore customer
complaints that come our way. Complaints from people that have bought a
product or have done business with you is the single most powerful tool you can
possess to know exactly how well your business is doing. So, rather than
writing off customer complaints as a reaction from a bunch of unruly people that
have had a bad day, for any company to thrive, it needs to assess these
complaints carefully. No amount of research and analysis or extensive pie
charts will give you a realistic and accurate account of how your business is doing, if
complaint registration does not figure high up in your priority list.

There are many companies that have websites with a
separate page of customer reviews, and for a good reason. This is an excellent
strategy used by many tech-savvy companies to gain new customers, because nothing
works better to convince a fist timer about a new product than a good review
from a satisfied customer. At the same time, the contrary is just as true. Even
in a long list of good reviews, if a single poor review flashes, it instantly
casts a shadow of doubt in a potential buyer or clients’ mind. So, just like
they say, ten good reviews usually usher in one good business deal and one bad
review can drive away ten potential business opportunities. Therefore, rather than
turning a deaf ear to complaints, companies should make a proactive effort to register
them and then work towards solving them as well.

Monitor

Many companies rely on a highly qualified team of
professionals to give them details and insights of how well their business is
doing, but no guy in a suit will be able to tell you how many times a customer
irately walked out of your store due to long snakelike queues or rude
salespersons. Many companies make efforts to launch new products or entice
customers with exciting discount offers but to win over a spurned customer,
these measures will fall flat. A company needs to not only register every
customer’s complaint but should also try and solve it as quickly as possible, because a spurned customer that has been won over once again will become a
truly loyal customer. And nothing works better to gain new customers than a
loyal and satisfied one. So, how does a company go about ‘finding’ complaints?
It’s simple. You need to use a sophisticated tool called customer relationship
management system which ensures customer satisfaction and increases loyalty.

Resolve

To register and address every complaint by giving it a
high priority can only truly be executed if a proper customer relationship management system is in place. A CRM system not only collects information from customers but also
fast tracks the process of solving the complaint at hand. This software enables
you to optimize customer experience by responding to the customer immediately, which makes the customer feel they are truly valued in your business set up and that their opinion
matters to you. Always ensure that your contact with a complaining customer is
on a one-on-one basis, the last thing that a calling customer wants to
do is wait at the end of a line for what seems like an eternity to register
a complaint. A CRM system streamlines this
entire process and makes it easier for you to register, address and even follow
up on customer complaints using newer channels like social networking and SMS. Also, poorly handled complaints can be escalated or reassigned to specialists.

Every company realizes that for a business to succeed, a minimum amount of mistakes need to be made. Indeed, the learning curve is very
short in the competitive field of business. Thus, the main curve that a
business must strive for is the smile of a satisfied customer, and this can
only be achieved if a proper CRM solution is ensuring complaints
and customer comments are captured for a company round the clock through customers' preferred channels. Most critically, there is no point collating complaints and inviting feedback from customers, when no decisive action or changes are made based on common issues and bottlenecks throughout the organization. For forward thinking companies, an effective CRM software ensures that management from top down has clear visibility that processes and strategies are being carefully followed to optimize customer experience.